Barbara Nitke is an internationally known photographer who began her career on the sets of porn flicks with her husband and porn producer, Herb Nitke (Devil in Miss Jones). Her 8 X 10 glossies from the shoots were used as trailers in movie houses. In the nineties, Nitke started shooting on site at leather and BDSM film shoots. But when she was introduced to real kinky couples through New York City's The Eulenspiegel Society (TES), her camera eye became re-inspired. She's collected these photos and they've now been published in a photo book called Kiss of Fire. This year, Nitke goes up against the federal government over a regulation called the Communications Decency Act in a court case over the right to post her work on the internet. Here's what she has to say:
ALT: What is it about the BDSM community that draws you in? How is it a different world from heterosexual porn?
NITKE: I think there's a fundamental difference between any kind of sex or SM that's work for hire, and sex or SM between people who love each other. As much as I loved the been-around-the-block, sophisticated sex worker porn world, when I met all the couples in love at TES it was like a breath of wonderful fresh air. There was a totally different energy to the same sexual positions and scenes that I had seen a million times, and that's because it was driven by love.
I love the sense of community that both of these worlds offer. The porn world has always felt like a big family to me, and I developed deep bonds with porn stars and porn crew people, which will always be with me. I sometimes say that the porn world is my alma mater -- the years I spent there are the equivalent of my college years.
In that sense the SM community is very similar. I feel like I am part of a big tribe of people who I will always be close to.
ALT: Are there still aspects of the BDSM community that you are unable to relate to personally?
NITKE: I find that people in the scene are such great communicators that I've been able to understand and relate to pretty much everything -- either that or I'm fooling myself!
ALT: As someone who doesn't participate in BDSM activity, but who has observed and appreciated it from close-up, what do you say to vanilla folk who find BDSM fearsome, corruptive, or depraved?
NITKE: I talk to vanilla people a lot about SM, and usually when I explain what a safeword is they begin to see that it's not what they imagined, because they see how much control the bottom has. Then I tell them how people negotiate scenes and decide in advance what they are going to do with each other. I tell them that they also discuss each other’s limits and that those limits are always respected.
I also make sure to explain that while some people just want to experiment with kinky sex and use it as a form of foreplay, a real sadomasochist is someone who is born that way. I believe that’s similar to being gay. And when they do SM they are making love in their own way, just like anybody else.
I often add that every person I have photographed has agreed to be seen openly in my pictures. They are “out -- and they are willing to have their images on the covers of magazines and in books for everyone to see. I believe this is a form of individual activism and that these people have reached a point where they refuse to be asked to be ashamed of their sexuality any longer. I applaud that.
So far, I have not had a single bad experience in communicating these ideas to vanilla audiences. They usually have lots of questions, and will come up afterwards and tell me they had no idea before what SM was really about. I think with time there can be an acceptance of SM in the mainstream world.
ALT: You've also talked about an anger component and a disconnected component to sex that you like to capture in photos. Did you find photographing BDSM fulfilling from this perspective?
NITKE: When I was working as a photographer on porn sets the appeal for me was the disconnection between people who were supposed to be intimate -- or at least hot. People would start yawning and smoking cigarettes as soon as they called a cut, no matter how exciting the scene they were shooting. Those were moments that I just loved because they were so surreal.
I also think that a significant amount of the sex performed in porn movies has an angry edge to it. That’s sometimes coming from the performers themselves, but more often it’s part of the theme of the movie. Either way, I found it interesting.
The porn industry is very much driven by consumer demand. If no one was buying misogyny as a theme, no one would be making it. Most porn producers are very simple capitalists out to make a buck. They will produce pretty much anything people want to buy.
I’ve always been amazed that sociologists aren’t out there in droves trying to figure out what porn trends reflect about our society, because there’s a lot of rich material there.
If I wanted to, I could easily find misogynistic moments (and what’s the word for the reverse -- women demeaning men?) in the SM world, but that’s not what I’m trying to say with my work in the scene. I’ve lost the cynical edge I once had and am now trying to show a connection between people, rather than a disconnection.
So one of the questions I ask myself is "did something within me change as I evolved on my own, or did the SM community change me?"
Or put differently, "was there love and sincerity in the porn world also, but I just wasn't ready to see it?
ALT: In taking your Kiss of Fire photos, what was it that gave you that excitement to start clicking rapidly, like the sense that you were onto something, what inspired that?
NITKE: Sometimes there's an interesting moment, and I can see that people’s expressions are rapidly changing. I want to give myself the maximum amount of choices for the final pictures. So I shoot as much as I can in a moment like that.
ALT: Could you explain your lawsuit against Ashcroft. You were not fined or cited for obscenity violations, right? So on what grounds do you end up suing the government?
NITKE: I am challenging a law called the Communications Decency Act along with my co-plaintiff, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom [NCSF]. We filed the suit in December of 2001 in order to fight for everyone’s right to freedom of expression on the Internet.
(John Ashcroft was the named defendant because that’s the legal process for challenging that law, but it’s not about him, it’s about the fact that the CDA is an unconstitutional law. I’m not sure if the name of the lawsuit will change now that he’s not in office, but I do know the lawsuit will continue.)
When I decided to create my website in early 2001, I asked John Wirenius and other lawyers what would be legally permissible. I was told that my photographs of loving SM and behind-the-scenes shots of the porn industry could get me into trouble with federal law under the CDA.
This law makes it a felony to put obscene material on the Internet, and obscenity is defined according to local community standards.
What's acceptable in New York might be considered obscene to people in another community. According to the current laws, people in each community should be able to decide what their own standards are. Which sounds fine until you think about it further.
One problem is that "community" isn't defined. Under the current laws, a community could be a couple of square blocks in the heart of the Bible belt, for example. The people in that area might think showing a little bit of female cleavage is obscene.
The next problem is that none of us can prevent the people in that tiny area from logging onto an inside page on our websites, without seeing our disclaimer pages on the front of the site. A prosecutor in their community could then bring a federal obscenity case against any of us under the CDA. Then we would be facing huge legal fees, fines and jail sentences.
I don't think that someone living on those few square blocks should be able to tell people all over the world what they're allowed to look at on the internet - whether it's my website, someone’s personal homepage, or a sex education website.
That's why our lawyer John Wirenius took the CDA lawsuit on as a pro bono case, and why I'm working on it along with Susan Wright and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.
ALT: You've said that your husband (Herb Nitke) spent a lot of time fighting law suits in the 70s? What were the circumstances? Were they similar to what you're afraid might be happening now? Do you feel those struggles then have helped prepared you for what's to come?
NITKE: My ex-husband fought three obscenity cases in the 1970s during the Nixon era, when there was a lot of right wing hysteria against sexual expression. I saw first hand how devastating, expensive and absurd obscenity cases are.
When we were first dating he was on trial in Rochester, NY -- a very conservative community. He called me every night convinced he was going to jail. He eventually got a hung jury there. The government then brought another case against him in Memphis TN, an even more conservative community. Memphis was often used as a venue for government obscenity cases back then. He spent a fortune in legal fees to local Tennessee lawyers before the case was finally dropped.
During the Reagan era there was another wave of obscenity prosecutions, which closed down a lot of X-rated businesses.
Phil Harvey, owner of a porn and sex toy company, called Adam & Eve, wrote a fascinating book called "The Government vs. Erotica" (Prometheus Books 2001) which details his three million dollar fight to defend himself against obscenity charges by the Regan administration.
The Bush administration is under a lot of pressure from the radical religious right to pursue obscenity prosecutions all over again. We're moving into another wave of anti-sex hysteria, especially after this recent election.
I believe this will ultimately affect not just the porn industry, but all people who work with sexual subjects ?from artists whose work explores sexuality, to scientists whose work involves researching the human body, to BDSM groups trying to hold conventions and keep their websites on the Internet.
ALT: You had a hearing October 27 (is that correct?). Or, what will the outcome mean for adult sites such as yours (http://www.barbaranitke.com) and even ours?
NITKE: We presented our case before a three-judge panel in federal district court in late October 2004. John Wirenius and his legal team presented a brilliant case, and we’re expecting a verdict at some point during 2005.
I would like to see this unconstitutional law overturned, but this will still take a while. As I understand it, whoever loses will appeal to the Supreme Court and they will make the final decision about the constitutionality of the law.
Personally, I would like to see no restrictions on material involving consenting adults on the Internet. I think the Internet should be a place for free expression and the exchange of ideas around the world. That's the outcome I'm hoping for.
("Me and Flame" Barbara Nitke)
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In exchange for the interview, Ms. Nitke asked if we'd post the following information for anyone who might be interested:
*NCSF has set up a fund to defray the costs of this high profile law suit. Checks can be made to NCSF with CDA Lawsuit on the memo line and sent to:
NCSF
322 Guilford Avenue, #127
Baltimore, MD 21202
For more information on the lawsuit, you can go to www.ncsfreedom.org and www.wireniusreport.net.
* National Coalition for Sexual Freedom is a national organization committed to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression. NCSF is primarily focused on the rights of consenting adults in the SM-leather-fetish, swing, and polyamory communities, who often face discrimination because of their sexual expression.
